User:Elina Rantala/Semantics

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Semantics is a branch of linguistics that deals with the meanings of words. Within semantics, the areas of interest include, for instance, different kinds of metaphors, the relationship between a symbol and its real-world reference, denotations versus connotations, truth relationships, and so on. Semantics also studies the so-called semantic fields.

The concepts of hypernyms and hyponyms, which group words into tree-like structures, based on their relationships. To give a short example, animal is an hypernym of cat, horse and lion, because all of these are animals. Accordingly, cat is a hyponym of animal.

There is a thin line between the branches of semantics and pragmatics, but where semantics considers the meanings of individual words, pragmatics is more concerned with meanings in the context of texts and the intended meanings of the speaker.